Saturday, December 29, 2012

At the beginning of all things, they came into being, and
they sang for joy as creation unfolded, for behold, it was very good! They
watched as the foundations of the earth were put in place, as wisdom shaped the
heights of the heavens and the depths of the seas, and called forth life. They
watched as the man came into being, and then the woman; they watched and they
learned that the only thing that was not good was to be alone. But they saw the
beauty of the Creator reflected in Creation, and they were glad.

They saw the years pass, and the deeds of darkness that could
not bear the light of day. They saw the hunting of the wolf and the owl, and
the vicious hunting of man by man. They saw, and they shuddered. Then came the
time when they saw nothing – for forty days and forty nights the world was
covered by dark clouds. When the clouds parted again they saw their own
reflection in the mirror of the vast waters, until the waters receded and the
land reappeared.

Time passed. They saw a man called out by God to count them
in the desert sky. He was overwhelmed by their magnitude, and even more
overwhelmed to be told that he, childless as he was, would be father to a host
more numerous than they. And, as generations passed, they watched those
children, too many to count, following a pillar of fire by night. They watched
the wars and the travails that followed. They watched a king pace his roof with
restless lust in his heart, they watched the rise and fall of nations, and
sometimes they hid their faces from the horror.

Then one of them was given a momentous task: to travel across
the sky from east to west and guide some stargazing mystics to a rough shelter
in a little town in the Land of Promise. And, even while that journey was in
progress, they witnessed a great marvel, for near that same little place, in
the dead stillness of the night, the very angels of God became visible, with a
light so bright that the stars felt faint and pale beside it. And the joy of
the angels’ song was like the joy sung at creation itself, as if, even in the
midst of trouble, misery, pain and entropy, something was being renewed and
reborn. And hope coruscated through the universe.

They watched, and in time they knew, for rumour proved to be
truth, and the world was being changed forever, as Truth Himself walked through
its dust. They shone over a betrayal, and the next night over an empty cross.
Then, when the world waited in silence, and no human eyes beheld, they saw the
emptying of the tomb, and felt the thrill of wonder.

And they continue to
watch, and, in their own distant way, to encourage and inspire. They shine
bravely knowing that a new creation is coming – glorious pure and perfect –
when every tear shall be wiped away and all things shall be healed. Sun and
moon shall be no more, for the Lamb Himself shall be Light, but the Redeemed
who pour into that city, the Overcomers, shall be given the morning star. And
all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

He was surprised when the
strangers came, looking for a king. Any ruler encountered odd people and odd
requests, especially foreign emissaries whose expectations were often very
different to those of his own people. Then one must weigh up carefully before
responding. What would it cost? Who would be gratified? Who would be offended?
Whatwould he, Herod, gain from all of this? Power was rather like a giant board
game, where one knew most of the moves, and became very adept, over time, at
blocking and defending, only appearing to yield when it put one’s opponent in a
more vulnerable position. But, just occasionally, a player would come along who
played the game so differently that he had no idea what strategy to use, or
whether he was winning or losing.

This was one of those times.
First he had heard the rumours (his informers were very good), then, deeply
disturbed, he had asked to see the men himself. He had expected to meet crazies
from the desert, with this mad talk of a new Jewish king being born. Everyone
knew that the sun out there could addle a man’s brains. Crazies were easy to
deal with. But when he met them he had to give up all these assumptions. These
were men from the exotic east, far beyond the sway of Rome;

they were wealthy men, and
learned, wise in the ways of the stars, a wisdom he knew nothing of. His eyes
had always been fixed on the darkness deep in the human heart, a darkness so
powerful that it could swallow up even his best beloved, and turn them into
enemies who were plotting against his throne and had to be killed.

So now he was confounded.
These were men who had to be taken seriously, and they had unwittingly exposed
a terrible threat to his throne. But where, and who, was this child? Surely the
priests would know? The priests murmured and muttered among themselves (was
there anything these men would not argue about?) Then they came back and told
him that it was prophesied that this child would be born in Bethlehem, just a
few miles down the road.

Once this would have given
him pause: sweating ice at the mere thought of trying to fight against a prophesied act of God Himself, but that time
was long past. Now the only icy sweat was at the thought of losing any of his
power. The fact that he would most likely be dead and gone before a newborn
child could ascend to power never even occurred to him. So, in anticipation of
a problem solved, he laid his plot.

It would all be so simple.
The eastern scholars would go and find this usurping child in Bethlehem, come
back and tell him all, ostensibly so that he too, could go and worship. As if!
Rather, he would quietly send a detachment of soldiers and the troublesome
child would never be heard of again. And maybe these foreigners should quietly
vanish as well? In anticipation, he sent them on their way.

But of course, it never
happened. For God, who had anticipated this child for time beyond Herod’s power
to reckon, sent the wise men home by another way, and when Herod, enraged, sent
his forces against every little boy in the town, somewhere far to the south, on
the road to Egypt, the King of kings and Lord of Lords snuggled against his
mother’s shoulder in anticipation of an ultimate victory against principalities
and powers compared to whom Herod, styled the Great, was as nothing.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

She had said it, and she had
meant it, and she meant it still. She
would not falter from that commitment, that obedience to God’s miraculous
choosing, but now she was learning that the saying was much easier than the living.
It was not true, of course, that every Jewish girl dreamed of being the mother
of the Messiah, some of the girls she knew would not have given it a moment’s
thought, there were far too many other things that interested them, but she
certainly had, and wasn’t the first to do so either. But it had been a little
girl’s dream, full of gentle-toned holiness, soft voices, and the admiration of
everyone she knew. The reality was far different, and she would never be that
little girl again.

Who knew how the Messiah
would be conceived? She supposed that the rabbis and wise men might well have
discussed such things, but, if they had, it had never occurred to them to share
their thoughts with young women who were, after all, the most likely people to
need to know. It had certainly never occurred to her that He would be born
outside of the ordinary ways of marriage, in a scenario that invited gossip and
condemnation. It cost to be the Lord’s servant.

Nor, in that strange,
marvellous conversation with the angel, had she thought of how difficult the
conversation with Joseph was going to be. If she had thought about it at all,
it was with a vague notion that God would have already explained it all to him.
After all, wasn’t she under God’s protection? Only now was she beginning to
understand what God’s protection actually looked like: glorious and marvellous,
but also rather terrifying to normal flesh and blood. Because, of course, God
had sorted it out, but only after she had faced the loneliness and shame of Joseph’s
disbelief. But then, she reflected, wasn’t that the way it had always been? The
priests had to step into the water before the Jordan receded; Shadrach, Meshach
and Abednego had to endure the terror of being cast into the unbearable fire
before they met the One who walked with them in the flames; Abraham had to lift
the knife against his son before the ram was given to be offered in Isaac’s
place. It was always the same: the Lord called His servants to walk into wonder
and great joy, but also into trouble and fear and great labour, for how else shall
flesh and blood keep company with the Holy One, the Maker of heaven and earth?

And now, having endured the
common ardours of pregnancy and the sideways glances of the women of Nazareth
as they watched her growing larger, she must set out on an uncomfortable
journey just when she was nearing her time. Her mother said she was mad to do
such a thing (and Joseph was mad to allow it), but she knew that this journey
was absolutely right. For where else should David’s greater descendant be born
but in David’s own town? The one who set the stars in place had set these
events in place as well, and she could rest against the reality that this was
of God and He would utterly provide.

She was the servant of the
Lord, a small but necessary participant in the miracle, and it would be to her
in accordance with His perfect love.

Saturday, December 08, 2012

All his life he had been
waiting, and sometimes it seemed like the hardest job in the world. He had seen
the impatience with which men usually waited: for a betrothed to reach
marriageable age, for a baby to be born, for a feast day, for a business
transaction to be completed so that they had the money or the goods were in
their hands; he had seen and he had marvelled. What did they know of waiting who
only had to endure for such a short and measurable season? For him the years
grew long, and the weariness immeasurable, but the sweetness of the Promise
still held him fast. No other thing could ever be so precious.

It had begun in his youth. He
had come to Jerusalem to study the scriptures, and had stayed there ever since,
to be near the Temple, where the presence of God was enacted every day, and to
wait for the Chosen One while he studied the Holy Writings to learn more. The
more he read, the more he understood, the more he knew how desperately Israel
needed her Messiah. From the day that the first man and the first woman had
eaten of the fruit and been driven from the garden, the promise of restoration
had been there. And down through history it had grown more specific: the
Servant, the Branch from the stump of Jesse, the Messenger who would suddenly
appear in the temple. The Messiah would be a descendant of Abraham, of Judah,
of David, as down through the years the Promise became more specific, and his
house would be established forever. And as his understanding grew, Simeon had
cried out to God for the Consolation of Israel to come.

And his prayer had been
heard. It had not been a blinding flash of revelation, but slowly, surely, the
Lord had shown him, as the Holy Spirit spoke to his spirit, an amazing promise:
that he himself would not die until he had seen the Messiah come. And so he
waited; summer and winter, day and night, through the fat years and the lean,
as the world seemed to him to grow more dreary and more desperate, he waited
for the Chosen One to come. And as he waited, he grew in wisdom, for he saw,
more and more clearly, that Israel needed military success far less than she
needed to be renewed and transformed. The ‘Consolation of Israel’ was her only
hope of salvation.

And finally, when age had so
bent him that every bone in his body was crying for release, the day came.
Moved by the Spirit, he went to the temple courts, and there he waited,
watching the line of pilgrims come to make their sacrifices. And there they
were, just another poor couple with their baby boy, and their offering of a
pair of pigeons. And yet, when he saw them, the Spirit spoke to him, and a
fierce joy and a gentle wonder flooded through him. This was the one! This
child, this baby settled quiet against his mother’s shoulder, was not just
Israel’s hope, but the Salvation of the world.

Afterwards he never
remembered what he said to the young mother, but she willingly passed the child
to him, and as he held the most precious thing in the universe, with steady
hands and streaming eyes, he whispered his prayer of thanks:

“Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, according
to your promise. For my eyes have seen your salvation ...”

It was enough, he was
at rest. And if the Lord so faithfully kept His promise to one man, how much
more His promise to all mankind?

Saturday, December 01, 2012

The angels poise themselves in expectation. They watch. They wait. They
have been watching and waiting for years beyond human knowledge, but now is the
fullness of time. It will happen tonight, and everything will be changed
forever, because God himself has done the unthinkable. The very atmosphere of
earth is pregnant with the Holy Spirit’s power and purpose, and they marvel
that human beings can be so unaware of cosmic realities. But some will be
players in tonight’s drama, and even now they are taking their places ..

The woman knows, though it will be many years before she
understands all the implications. She is tired: the travelling has been rough,
and the pains started several hours ago. She leans on the strength of the man,
letting him organise things for her, for the hour of her need approaches. It
has been a strange nine months, living in two realities at once: the ordinary
pregnancy, the extraordinary conception. But now her exhausted mind is stilled upon
two realities – the demanding rhythms of her own body, and the still, deep
certainty that she and her future are held and carried in the love of God. She
does not yet know that because of this night to come, and because of that
daring ‘yes’ she said nine months earlier, her obscure, ordinary name will be
known and honoured as long as the earth endures.

The man is as anxious as any first time father. Far away
from the female relatives who would normally care for her at such a time, he
feels an added responsibility to care for her safety, and that of the child.
And he knows so little about things. But as he fusses around, trying to make
sure that everything possible is provided for her, he is overtaken by a deep
sense of peace. This birth has been planned for aeons; he can leave the outcome
in the Lord’s hands.

The town is falling asleep, though restively. There are too
many people crowded here at the moment; no one is quite at ease. But the
laborious day brings its own reward of rest, and, one by one, the lamps are
going out.

Out on the hills, it is just another night of
sheep-watching. Or is it? The sheep are not settling down in their normal way,
like Balaam’s donkey centuries before, they can sense the angelic presence
which men are blind to. So the men, tuned into their beasts, if not to spiritual
realities, are alert. There is a sense of waiting.

And somewhere, far to the east, a mighty star is shining,
directing a bunch of weary travellers on their way. It is hard to travel by
night and to try to sleep by day, but when the guiding star is only visible in
the darkness, they have no other choice. The miles grow burdensome, but when
they look up to the star they are reassured. Somewhere, many days ahead of
them, a mighty wonder is waiting, a wonder that is worth all the kingdoms of
the earth and the glory of them.

Night settles more deeply
over the little town. Somewhere, a few miles to the north, an unhappy king
starts from his sleep with a nightmare sense of foreboding. Why should he feel
so threatened in the stillness of the night? The cold, midnight darkness is
strangely silent, as if all the non-human creation is holding its breath ..

Then, somewhere in
little Bethlehem, the thin cry of a newborn pierces the night, and creation
exhales. The angels can restrain themselves no longer, they see the amazing
miracle, and marvel. High above the surrounding fields they soar and sing,
“Glory to God in the Highest!”

Saturday, November 24, 2012

I am not sure that
I can explain what took me there that night. Fear and shame had been wrestling
inside me against burning curiosity, and after days of internal conflict, I
simply wanted peace. But it was something else that compelled my feet through
the dark streets of Jerusalem that night. As a boy I had watched a fisherman
draw in a fish: it didn’t matter which way it thought it was swimming, when the
fisherman pulled it would come in regardless. So it was: I was drawn and I
came.

And I have never
felt more confused in my life! No sooner had we exchanged courtesies (extremely
courteous on my part, one does not wish to risk offending a prophet of God),
than He launched straight into the most extraordinary statement I had ever
heard from rabbinical lips: “No one caqn see the Kingdom of God unless he is
born again!”

Unless he is …
what? This was no longer the comfortable conversation I had rehearsed in my
head. I floundered, what could he possibly mean? I had imagined us talking elegantly, one
learned man to another, while I gently probed to get his measure, but now it
felt as if he were doing the probing, and had found a hollow place right in the
centre of my being. I knew all the classic arguments, the midrash of the sages,
but …. I shook my head. It was as if we
had sat down to play a game together, an old familiar game, and suddenly my
opponent was moving his pieces in ways I had not even imagined they could be moved. I had no response to give.

“Do you mean that
a man, an adult, has to back inside his mother’s womb?” Even putting it into
words was ridiculous, but, turn it every which way, it still made no sense. I
hadn’t felt so stupid since I was a child.

He started to
explain to me about being born of the Spirit, the mysterious Spirit that blows
where it will. He seemed to be saying that the Kingdom of God was something
different from the Israel that I was part of by virtue of my ancestry, or at
least that one only became part of it by a way I could not comprehend.

He teased me
gently, and in His smiling voice I heard an invitation to let go of all my assumptions about my own
importance: “You mean that you are a teacher in Israel and you don’t know about
this?”

True. He had me
there, so I listened as he continued to explain. And as he spoke I began to
see, but dimly, as a man sees shapes through a fog, enough to stay on his path,
but not enough to see where the path is leading him. I realized that what he
said was true, we cannot speak or teach beyond our own experience, and yet we
are so quickly dismissive of the testimony of those who know more of God than
we do. That is our shame, and our blindness.

And then he spoke
of the ways of God, and of a love that could not be confined to Israel, but
would reach out to embrace the world (though I could not understand when he spoke
of how this was to be done). And I began to grasp the notion that it was not
only those who were born of Abraham’s lineage who were his children, but that
there were many who would come in, from the east and the west, who would be
drawn in. And perhaps (though this was much harder to accept), we Israelites
were not truly Abraham’s children either until we became so by … this other way ..

There was so much
I hadn’t begun to realize, that I couldn’t until that dreadful day when I saw
what he meant about being lifted up, but my journey had begun, and for many
sleepless nights I wrestled with his words, placing them in counterpoint to the
Torah until my thoughts began to take new shapes.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

He languishes in his cell. He has a history, he
has a name, yet neither of them seem to matter anymore. He did what he did because
it was the only thing he knew how to do, and he is not sure that even now,
knowing the consequences, he would be able to do any differently. A man must
stand up for himself, or else be sucked down and eaten up. There are no
reprieves, no second chances, and, sooner or later, every man’s time is up. He
can feel the fear in his stomach, corrosive as acid, but he will hold his
bravado to the last (he hopes).

He has never been
a thinker, he always prided himself on being a man of action, who didn’t give
those paralyzing second thoughts any headspace, but now, in his little,
miserable cell, there is nothing to do except think. A man can only rage for so
long before his body is too exhausted to keep fighting. So he lets his mind
wander across his memories: the swift gladness of success, the contentment of
comradeship with other outcast men, the heady knowledge that he was a hero to
some and a reviled name to others: the timid law-abiders, the soft cowards he
despised. He saw himself as a man who fought for Israel’s freedom; the fact
that he also fought for the booty and the spoil, and the hot pleasure of
violence – surely that was secondary?

He had not known
his own name, growing up as he did on the tattered outskirts of society, so,
with rough irony they gave him a name: Barabbas, son of the father. It was a
good name to play with and fight with. He tasted its nuances as he sat and
waited, wondering how much time he had left.

But something was
different this morning. Even here, under the heavy layers of stone, he could
hear the noises of a crowd, an angry crowd, shouting out over and over again.
He tried to make out the muffled and distorted syllables. “Crucify him!” they
seemed to be saying. He shuddered; when it is your own flesh facing the nails
and the long, slow agony, such bloodthirstiness seems a lot less appealing. And
then he heard a word he could not mistake, they were crying out his own name.
What? Why should the Jerusalem mob be crying out for his death? It made no
sense, but he felt the bile in his throat and cringed into the corner of his
cell.

There was a heavy
tramp of footsteps which could only mean a full contingent of Roman guards. Was
this the hour of his death? Wordlessly, they opened the door, beckoned to him
and led him up the stairs and corridors to daylight. And then they released
him!

What
was happening? A few sentences from bystanders explained the situation: that
man up there on the platform, Jesus of Nazareth, still and tranquil despite the ropes around
him, was going to be crucified in his place. The choice had been made, he would
live and Jesus would die. He gazed, and he wondered. To his own surprise, the
hard, tough man found himself crying.

Saturday, November 10, 2012

A pit is not a good place to be. It is dank, it is dark, and
no one ever cleans it. The smell of the beasts was almost overpowering, and the
man knew, that, though he had entered it willingly and calmly, eyes wide open
and head held high, his mind composed and
his faith at rest, that his body responded to the sensory horror with visceral
fear, and the lions could smell the sweat of his ordeal.

There was comfort in remembering how others before him had
endured in such a desperate place. The patriarch Joseph had been thrown into a
pit (by his own brothers, no less!), sold into slavery, and, because God was
with him, later risen to become the second-in-command in mighty Egypt, and
saved many lives. Or Jeremiah, who was cast into a pit for speaking faithfully
what God had commanded him to say. And then there was Jonah. Wasn’t the insides
of the belly of a great fish the worst kind of pit? And, though Jonah’s own
folly had brought him to that place, it was the Lord who put him in the pit,
and took him out again.

But this was now, not then, and who could predict God’s
ways? That a man could pray, faithfully, to the God of his fathers, the Maker
of heaven and earth, all the days of his life, and find comfort and sustenance
in worship, even though he was far away from Jerusalem and the Temple, and then,
when his years were many and his body less, be hauled off to die for the simple
act of prayer? But a man does not change his loyalty, his allegiance, when the
price tags are changed; if this was the cost of fidelity, so be it, God was
still God.

It was the jealousy and malice of men which had put him
here, their determination to get rid of a faithful servant whose integrity
showed them up; and the king, caught between their cunning and his own
weakness, was forced to send his most treasured servant to the pit of the
lions. And the lions were hungry.

But they made no move towards him. After a few minutes of
silent tension, he turned to face them, and, as his eyes grew accustomed to the
dark, he realised that there was another figure standing between the lions and
himself, and it was not a mortal man. It was an angel of the most high God,
sent for his succour and protection in his hour of need. He was no longer
concerned about the lions, but awed into silence by this holy presence. All
night long the angel kept guard, all night long the lions remained peacefully
in their corner, and the man, with a prayer of thanksgiving lay down to sleep:
“For it is You Lord, You, lord, only, who makes me to dwell in safety.”

In the morning the
king came, overwhelmed with concern, to find out if his servant had survived.
Marvelling, he had him lifted out and checked out to see how his body had borne
its terrible incarceration, but he bore no wounds whatsoever. His very body had
become a testimony to his God. Yet when his accusers were thrown into the pit
in their turn, the lions did not hesitate to destroy them. This was a God to be
reverenced and worshipped.

Saturday, November 03, 2012

There is a place you find yourself in when it has all been
too much, when the worst has happened and yet you are still breathing. The
ritual wailing of the mourners had already started, but inside her head there
was an empty silence, reverberating only with hopelessness. There was no life
left in her except the basic, inexorable functions of a body she no longer
fully inhabited. She did not even feel the tears that trickled helplessly down
her face, but the mourners did, and it worried them far more than a dramatic
exhibition of grief.

She knew, though she feared the sin of saying it, that she
did not want to live in a world that did not contain her daughter. All during
the girl’s short illness she had bargained and pleaded with God to spare the
child, but the girl was dead. She might as well have been asking favours of the
rocks and stones.

She had even sent her husband off to seek the Healer, who
was supposed to be in the town, but it was too late. The girl was dead – and
those words, however they were weighed and turned, bore down on her with their
crushing weight. Her only child, her love and her joy, was gone from the world,
and all the lights had been turned out. She wondered, heavily and drearily, in
the wasteland beyond passion, if God really cared for mothers, or daughters at
all. Perhaps He only answered prayers for sons?

There was a commotion at the door: her husband was back with
the Healer. Why were they bothering? It was too late -- everything was too
late. Even the unvoiced thoughts tasted like ash in the back of her throat. She
heard the Healer rebuking the mourners, crazily saying that the child was still
asleep. Did He think they were naive children, who could not tell the
difference between sleep and death? The sudden silence made her ache; she
realised that their wailing had actually help her detach from the pain. Now the
bitter knife was twisting afresh in her own heart.

The Healer shooed the mourners away and entered the room
with just a few people. She shrank back into the shadows, unable to deal with
this intrusion. She felt as if this was a charade for someone else’s benefit,
but a cruel mockery of her grief. But his keen eyes sought her where she hid,
and smiled with such gentle understanding that she had to take notice. There was no mockery in Him at all.

He moved to the bed where the child lay, and took her by the
hand, and spoke. “Little girl, I say unto you arise!” The voice was soft, and
incredibly tender, but He spoke with such authority that, in that moment, she
had no trouble believing that death itself would have to obey Him. And
immediately the child arose, got up and walked around.

What do you do when you stand in the middle of a miracle? She
was dazed, stunned as her world revolved into a new position. Was this real?
Could this be? Can the dead be restored to life? Does God answer the prayers of
an ordinary woman? Who was this Healer, and, if He really did have the power of
God, why should He come into her house? She was afraid to move, to touch her
child, for fear the miracle should dissolve and the agony return.

But the Healer
noticed and spoke again. “Give her something to eat,” He said. And her world,
this new, wonderful world full of hope and promise and gladness, turned right
way up again, and she turned towards the kitchen.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

The beginning of the road called Love is so attractive that
many people choose it. Not everyone does, of course, some prefer the golden
road of Greed, or the stark, twisting road of Power, and others are drawn to
Knowledge, or Pleasure or even choose to go nowhere at all. But it starts in
wide meadows of flowers and soft sunshine, and many think that they have
arrived when they have barely passed the entry point, and sit around in easy
groups making daisy chains. What becomes of them when the storms gather, and
the cracking lightning sizzles across the open fields, I do not know, but
perhaps they have to make a real choice for the first time in their lives.

But the meadows are only the beginning of the road. It
continues. Fairly soon (though sooner for some than for others, but such is the
nature of the road) another road branches off, broad and fair, There is a row
of fine hotels there, which cost almost nothing to inhabit. Many turn aside
there, for surely this is a pleasant place to go, and look what pleasant people
are already there. And every hotel is called ‘Nice’. And those that turn off at
this point keep straying further, for each hotel seems more agreeable than the
one before, and they are so pleased with themselves for becoming ‘nice’ people,
that they do not even notice that each hotel is made of thinner and thinner
cardboard.

But the road called Love continues, and gradually the travellers
notice that three possibilities have developed. On the right hand side the road
surface goes harder and smoother. Eventually it veers off from the road called
Love, into Moralism. Those who take that exit will find it leads them at last
to a stern wilderness strewn with rocks. As fast as they try to build
themselves shelters there from the rocks, they pull them off again in order to
throw them at one another. On the other edge, the left side, the path gets
softer and softer, until your feet start to sink into it like sand. Eventually
this veers off into the road called Tolerance, and those who follow it end up
in a slow quicksand. Because they are all sinking they cannot pull each other
out.

Meanwhile, shed of these diversions, the road named Love
continues. It is narrower now, and goes more steeply. Sometimes it is so steep
that one has to use both hands and feet to climb it. Sometimes it is so narrow
it feels like walking a tightrope. Many turn back or stop when they reach those
places. Some even devote themselves to telling others not to go there, “it’s
too dangerous”. They do not understand that, though there may be scrapes and
bruises, no one can ever fall very far. There is always a safety net: the
Everlasting Arms are stretched to catch any who lose their footing, and lift
them up once again.

At last, and the road
is a different length for every traveller, they reach the summit of the road.
It is a stark, bare hill, surmounted with a cross. By this time the journey has
changed the traveller, and they rarely hesitate. Willingly they climb up to the
cross, willingly they embrace it. And the moment that should be death becomes
the moment of transformation, for the road of Love is the road to LOVE, LOVE in
all its fullness, and they know themselves truly to be the beloved of the
Beloved.

Saturday, October 06, 2012

How I longed for the freedom of Israel! I
hated the Roman yoke we struggled under, and I was quite convinced that most of
the problems I saw around me were the direct result of our nation being under
Gentile oppression, and that if only we could be liberated from them, we would
truly be the Israel of God that the prophets had described. My friends
nick-named me the Zealot for my passionate views.

I was surprised when the Teacher called me
to be one of his disciples, but I was entranced by the beauty of his teaching,
and impressed by his miraculous powers. Surely he was the one sent by God to
deliver us? So I followed, and I sat as his feet and I learned. He knew the
scriptures better than any rabbi I had ever heard, but when he explained them,
they came together in a different pattern. Truth itself was a different shape
to what I had thought. The Kingdom of God, as he described it, was so different
to the correct religious observances that the priests taught us. There was
freedom there, as well as justice, and something else I couldn’t put a name to.
Only later did I learn to call it love.

And the miracles? Truly he had the power of
God! He could heal the sick, the blind and the deaf, calm a storm, feed a
multitude from almost nothing, and even raise the dead. With such power, how
could he not defeat the Romans and bring about a greater Israel than David or
Solomon ever knew?

Even when they arrested him, I hoped this
would be the moment when he turned the tables and showed his power. But it
wasn’t like that. Convinced that something had gone horribly wrong, we fled the
scene and cowered in hiding. Wasn’t he going to fight for us at all?

It was only days later that I began to
understand. Yes, he was fighting for us in every moment of his suffering.
Sometimes the warrior is not the one who beats everyone else up. Sometimes he
is the one who gets beaten. It takes so much courage to suffer in silence for
another’s sake. I thought the victorious fighter was the one with the shining
armor and the blood-smeared sword. I was so wrong.

Our greatest need wasn’t to defeat Rome,
our greatest enemies weren’t the Romans, but those who could devour Rome,
Israel, and every human being that ever was or will be. Our greatest enemies were
Sin, Death and Satan, and in that lonely torment on the cross he overcame them
all. Calmly and deliberately, he walked into the ultimate darkness, and made a
way. He was life, the very life of God himself, and that life was the light of
men. It is easy to be brave when you operate in your strength, and the cheering
crowd supports you. But to fight alone, invisibly, under insult and derision,
and still stay faithful to the end? Such is my hero, my warrior, my Lord and my
God.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Night. It is forever night here, even when
the sun shines, stark and blazing, overhead. It is the night of those men who
love darkness, rather than light, because their deeds are evil. Darkness cloaks
the truths we cannot bear to face, re-clothing them in the illusion of
glamour. But how many of these men know
that they do evil? Some know, and take pleasure in it, they are devils in human
form and cruelty and destruction are their delight. The darkness is both within
them and without, and the pain of others has become their meat and drink. But
most of them are men, human beings with wives and children, who love and
delight in the common grace notes of life: the warm hug, the cool drink, the
feel-good trappings of ordinary success. How did they come to be such
instruments of Hell?

Some know that they do evil, but have lost
the ability to preserve their own souls. They may be valiant on the battlefield
they were trained for, but in the moral arena they are arrant cowards. They go
through the motions like men in a waking dream, automata who do just as they
are instructed with set faces and empty eyes. Somewhere, locked deep away,
their soul is screaming with the terror of damnation, but they dare not listen.
It is easier to sell your human birthright for a bowl of soup, than to throw
your soup back in your superiors’ faces. Such men end up on the other side of
the wire. They are called prisoners. But then, in such a system, who is free?
So they fumble their nervous addictions, and try to pretend all is well.

And many deny evil, refusing to name it for
what it is. Years of enculturation have made their hearts as cold, and as hard,
as the ice on the Bavarian mountains. It is just another, necessary job. It is
the prisoners’ own fault if they are hurt, if they are disobedient or
inadequate and cannot meet the demands placed upon them. Weak men deserve what
they get, and the elimination of the weak is the price that must be paid for a
‘better’ world. In truth, they have no choice. Once you admit the truth of others’
pain you can no longer deny your own: you must acknowledge that your own soul
was not created to thrive in this barren wasteland, where dog eats dog and the
hard men laugh at the bones. It is so much easier to drift along with the
system, submit to the propaganda and the lies, and dismiss love as the realm of
women and fools. And if the wind blows bleak and terrible in your nightmares,
well, you have learned to endure silently even in your sleep.

But no night is eternal, and when the light
of heaven breaks upon your prisoners and slaves, the eyes of the world will
turn to you and demand an accounting. And no one will consider the sheer
banality of evil, or the simplicity of the descent to Avernus, an adequate
excuse. You were a human being, you were supposed to see and know.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

We were so afraid. Slavery teaches
you to live by fear, but these cascading events had opened us to levels of
terror we had sought our whole lives to avoid.
We had watched with horror, wonder and amazement while the plagues fell
on our Egyptian neighbours. Were the old stories true? Did we really belong to
a different God, greater than all the gods of Egypt, who, after leaving us
alone and enslaved for generations, was suddenly making Himself known by great
works of power? It was hard to comprehend, to re-adjust our thinking. Still,
being freed from slavery sounded wonderful, even if we couldn’t quite
understand what the alternative would be.

Then came the night that was
different from all other nights: we went through the preparations like people
in a dream, performing a sequence of actions with little understanding. It was
all unreal. Then, right at midnight, a great cry of pain went up from the
broken land. Egypt had stood firm against hail and darkness, pestilence and
destruction, but the death of the firstborn brought a proud nation to her
knees. Suddenly, they weren’t only allowing us to leave; they were urging us to
be gone as quickly as possible! So at Pharaoh’s command and our neighbours’
encouragement we left, though we had never known any other home.

The next days passed in a haze of
unreality: there we were, a huge mass of people, with our flocks and herds and
basic belongings, following a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by
night. Who has ever heard of such a thing? And then, while we were still trying
to make sense of it all, we learned that Pharaoh was pursuing us. Of course,
what else should we expect? This had all been a dream of surpassing
strangeness, and we would wake again to harder, harsher labour, if we woke at
all, and did not simply die in the desert. We were very much afraid.

But Moses was unperturbed. As we
stood there, helpless, between the great waters and the advancing Egyptian
army, he stretched out his staff, a strong wind blew, and an impossible path
opened before us. We walked across those strange wet sands clinging tightly to
one another, watching with a kind of fascinated terror the mighty wall of water
that loomed on either side of us. There
was no human reason why it should not fall down on top of us at any moment. By
the time we got to the further shore we were aching with tension – and the army
of Egypt was still following us, right down onto that terrible path across the
bottom of the sea. And we stood there and watched them, blankly and bleakly,
too spent with both the travelling and the terror to run any further.

Then, even as we watched, Moses
stretched his hand out over the waters once more, and those towering walls came
crashing down, and a gasp of wonder rose from our whole people as the Egyptians
were swept away in that mighty torrent. Not one of them was left. And, as we
watched, that enormous wave threw their bodies, their countless broken bodies,
up upon the shore. And we wept and trembled at the marvel.

But as we stood there in shock,
Moses led us in a song of praise to the God who had delivered us, and suddenly
we were a people released into song, and with the singing came tears, and
laughter and understanding, as we spoke out what we had seen and our words gave
meaning to the events we had witnessed:

Saturday, August 11, 2012

He is the Lover, and has been from
all eternity. In love he created all that is, in love He redeemed it, and in
love He shall reconcile it to Himself. All that is good, right and beautiful
flows from His love, for love is the very essence of Himself. And if He is the Lover, then it is you who
are the Beloved.

Yes, you. You crouch there, locked
in your shame, paralysed by regret. You have done things which destroyed your
very concept of yourself, and the sickening guilt pursues you. You had never
seen yourself as a person who would do such things, and are horrified to find
out that you are. How can you stand upright again? How can you look the world
in the eye, or face your own reflection in the mirror? If the world knew the
truth, the world would despise you. And yet, you are the Beloved. He has looked
on sin, entered into the very pit of Hell, and when He looks at you, He sees
His child. You are the Beloved.

You are so tired of the pain of
rejection; so tired of people who promise so much and deliver so little. The
more you need, the less they want to know you. There have been those who have
hated you and scorned you, and you searched your heart with many tears to try to
find a reason why. But none of their reasons seemed to stick, and left you more
confused than ever. “What is wrong with me?” you cried out silently to the
empty night. And you thought nobody was there. But He was there, He who,
Himself, has been despised and rejected, a thing from which men turned away
their eyes. For you are the Beloved, the apple of His eye. You are worth more
to Him than all the riches of the world, and he longs for the day when He shall
wipe every tear from your eyes. You are the Beloved.

Your life has gone nowhere. Your
dreams fell apart in your hands, and trickled through your fingers into
nothingness. You could have accepted a few failures as events to learn from and
grow successful, but what do you do with this meaningless mediocrity? You have
achieved nothing except survival, and just enough material comfort to numb out
your aching soul. How is the world any better off for your existence? You are
just part of the mindless machinery of the system, interchangeable with
thousands. Yet you are the Beloved. You are made in His image, and one day His
splendour will be fully revealed in you. It is not for your work or
achievements that He loves you, but because you are His – the Beloved.

Pain has crushed you, and melted
you in its dark heat, until nothing is left but an existential scream. You did
not seek affliction, but it sought you, tearing at you with the teeth of hell.
Such pain, such loss, such anguish: the crying point that God Himself must hate
you to abandon you in such a place! Yet you are the Beloved. You are never
abandoned, He walks through the furnace with you, and an eternity of joy waits
on the other side. There will be justice, there will be consolation, and there
will be the restoration of all things. You will know that you are, and always
have been, the Beloved.

You are the Beloved, and He has
loved you from all eternity. Neither death, nor Hell, nor all the forces of
evil that ever were or ever could be can come between you. He has loved you
with an everlasting love, and to Him you are the altogether beautiful. For you
He bore all things and endured all things, and one day, when the shadows of
this world are torn away, you will know just how utterly and wonderfully you
are loved.

About Me

Mother of two grown up kids,and very long time married, after many years as a full-time mum, then a part-time theological student I'm now trying to be useful in my local church whilst working out what the next step is.I'm passionate about Jesus, treasure the people in my life and dream of being a preacher. I'm a would-be poet, a slightly eccentric cook, and an INFP (which must explain something).
And I'm a pickle: a weird shaped lump of something-or-other, a bit salty, a bit sweet, definitely an acquired taste, preserved by the grace of God and trying to add a bit of flavour to the blandness of modern life.